Taking Action Against Obamacare

September 24, 2009: Alexander calls on Secretary Sebelius to rescind “gag order” against private Medicare providers. Alexander joined Senate Republican leadership and the Senate’s health and finance committees’ respective ranking members in sending a letter calling on Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to rescind the “gag order” issued by CMS. The gag order prohibits health care providers who offer services through Medicare from providing information about the impact of proposed legislation on their services.

April 23, 2010: Alexander highlights administration report that points to rising individual premiums. “The Obama Administration’s own report now confirms what Republicans feared all along – that the new health care law will add to the federal debt and lead to higher health insurance costs for Americans. Republicans respectfully warned the president at the White House health care summit that his plan would increase individuals’ health premiums, and now it turns out Medicare’s chief actuary says those fears were justified.”

August 3, 2010: Alexander cosponsors bill to repeal “job-killing” health care law mandate. “As if the health care law wasn’t flawed enough, hidden inside it was a provision calling for yet another job-killing and costly Washington mandate for American businesses … we want small businesses to grow and hire – not spend valuable time and resources filling out a separate tax form for every phone bill, every rent check, every utility payment over $600.”

January 27, 2012: Alexander calls on president to “stop overcharging 16 million students who have student loans to help pay for the health care law.”After President Obama’s State of the Union address, in which the president warned colleges about increasing their tuition costs, Alexander said:“If the president wants to reduce the cost of going to college, he should do two things. First, he should stop overcharging 16 million students who have student loans to help pay for the health care law: the federal government borrows money at 2.8 percent and loans it to students at 6.8 percent and uses some of that profit to help pay for the new health care law. Second, the president should stop imposing new Medicaid mandates on the states, which are forcing tuition costs to go up. In Tennessee, for example, over the last ten years, Medicaid costs have gone up 43 percent and that’s forced the state to reduce funding to colleges and universities by 11 percent. As a result, tuition has gone up 120 percent over those ten years.”

February 8, 2012: Alexander cosponsors Rubio bill to repeal mandate in new health care law and restore “religious conscience” protections. Alexander cosponsored the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” introduced by Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), which would repeal a mandate in the new health care law that requires religious institutions to offer employees reproductive services that violate the institutions’ religious tenets, saying: “Requiring our nation’s religious institutions to defy the basic tenets of their faiths shows a disturbing disregard for the Constitution’s protections of religious freedom.”

June 28, 2012: Alexander says health care law is “still an historic mistake” despite Supreme Court ruling. Alexander said: “The Supreme Court may have failed to declare the entire health-care law unconstitutional, but it is still an historic mistake that expanded a health-care system we already knew we couldn’t afford. Congress should repeal the law and then proceed step by step to reduce the cost of health care so more Americans can afford to buy insurance.”

January 15, 2013: Alexander says administration’s health care law delays won’t help states. “The problem with the health-care law’s requirement that states set up health-care exchanges isn’t that states need more time – it’s that the draft rules lack flexibility for states, and the health-care law itself is a poorly written, over-regulating law that never should have been passed in the first place,” he said.

January 22, 2013: Alexander introduces bill to repeal health care law’s individual mandate. The bill gained the support of 30 senators in addition to sponsors Alexander and Senator Hatch. “Congress should repeal the law, especially the individual mandate, and then proceed step by step to reduce the cost of health care so more Americans can afford to buy insurance,” Alexander said.

January 22, 2013: Alexander voted top Republican on Senate health committee.“I am honored that my Republican colleagues elected me as the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Tennessee is helping lead the country in health care and education innovation, and this opportunity will give me a strong voice in reducing regulations that get in the way of private sector innovation, and getting Washington out of decisions that should be made by states, communities, and individuals,” Alexander said.

January 29, 2013: Alexander cosponsors a bill introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to fully repeal the health care law. Alexander said: “The case for repealing this law has only grown stronger as American businesses and families have begun to feel the pain of its impact—a half-trillion dollars of new taxes, premiums going up, employers cutting hours and jobs just to stay in business. Rather than expand a system everyone knows is too expensive, we should be working to reduce its cost so more Americans can afford health insurance.”

February 7, 2013:Alexander says nonpartisan report “confirms the failures of the health care law.” After a Congressional Budget Office report that 7 million Americans will lose their job-based health care as a result of the new health care law, Alexander said: “At least 7 million people will lose the health insurance the president promised they’d be able to keep, and our nation’s job creators will be taxed $150 billion in penalties as a result. The President should accept that this law isn't the right solution and he should work with Congress to repeal it, and then work with us on ways to lower the cost of health care so that more people can afford it.”

February 28, 2013: Alexander andSenate, House lawmakers announce bill to repeal job-killing employer mandate.The bill, called the American Job Protection Act, would repeal the job-killing employer mandate that was included in the President’s $2.6 trillion health law, which requires businesses of 50 employees or more to provide health insurance of minimum value or pay a penalty between $2,000 and $3,000 for each employee working 30 hours or more a week.

May 2, 2013: At Onyx in Memphis, Alexandersays he’ll fight to repeal Obamacare tax on medical devices. “This burdensome tax on medical devices is already costing Tennesseans jobs and hurting a crucial Memphis industry by increasing costs, stifling investment and ultimately driving up prices for patients in need of medical help,” Alexander said. “Memphis has become an important center for medical devices, and the industry ranks as Tennessee’s top export. Repealing the Obamacare tax on medical devices – devices that save lives – is one of the most important things we can do to create good jobs for Tennesseans.”

June 7, 2013: Alexander and health committee Republicans send letter to HHS Secretary Sebelius. Alexander requests the agency to investigate whether any other state may be concealing details of exchange contracts that award federal dollars, in response to a recent news report that California may be concealing the details of contracts awarded using federal dollars to establish and run its Affordable Care Act health insurance exchange.

July 3, 2013:Sen. Alexander says “Obamacare is unraveling.” After the administration delayed the employer mandate for one year, Alexander said: “This is Obamacare unraveling. This is the ‘train wreck’ that the Senator who wrote the health care law predicted was coming. Pushing the implementation of the employer mandate until after the 2014 election confirms the law was an historic mistake. It should be repealed and replaced with effective legislation that will reduce costs by involving patients in health care decision making. This delay will make a giant mess of the individual mandate because presumably individuals are still required to purchase insurance.”

October 10, 2013: Alexander investigates extent of Obamacare launch problems. Alexander, with House oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa, sends a letter to HHS Secretary Sebelius: “We are concerned by recent comments to the media that the system suffers from architectural problems that need design changes. We seek information about these problems as well as whether you still expect individuals to suffer a tax penalty if they do not purchase government-approved health insurance.”

March 20, 2014:Alexander: Repealing the Obamacare medical device tax would create Memphis Jobs. At a roundtable with a panel of leaders in the Memphis-area medical device industry, Alexander renewed his call for the repeal of the health care law’s 2.3 percent excise tax on medical device manufacturers: “This onerous $30 billion tax on revenue has cost 33,000 jobs, increased the cost of life-saving medical devices and discouraged innovation for new devices."

April 17, 2014:Sen. Alexander, GOP colleagues urge Census Bureau to keep questions on uninsured in order to understand impact of Obamacare. The senators write: “We respectfully request that you continue to collect data using both the old and new survey questions for this year and next year. Of course we always want the best statistical information, but the collection of only one year of comparable data is insufficient. Continuing to collect data using both the old and new survey questions will help ensure that you do not conflate a change in measurement with changes due to implementation of the new health care law.”

January 21, 2015: Alexander introduces bill to repeal individual mandate. “How can we continue to enforce the individual mandate when the law doesn’t clearly ensure that millions of Americans are allowed to receive subsidies to help cover the cost? How can we enforce it when Obamacare outlaws plans that fit family budgets? Millions more Americans are in for sticker shock when they see how much they owe the IRS in April because of Obamacare. We need to focus on making health care plans affordable to Americans,” Alexander said.

January 30, 2015: Alexander presses the administration on Healthcare.gov security.In a letter to the administration with House and Senate leaders, Alexander said, “It appears that when an individual visits HealthCare.gov, information about that person is shared through an automated process with companies such as Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and Advertising.com. In most instances, this information is shared long after their visit to HealthCare.gov has concluded.”

March 1, 2015: Alexander, Hatch, and Barrasso lay out a plan for fixing health care. In an op-ed in the Washington Post on the outcome of the King v. Burwell Supreme Court case, the senators write, “Such a ruling could cause 6 million Americans to lose a subsidy they counted on, and for many the resulting insurance premiums would be unaffordable. Republicans have a plan to create a bridge away from Obamacare.”

January 12, 2017: Alexander votes to take first step towards building better health care systems that give Americans access to truly affordable health care. Alexander likened addressing the collapsing Obamacare exchanges in Tennessee and across the country to handling a collapsing bridge: “If your local bridge were ‘very near collapse,’ the first thing you would do is send in a rescue crew to repair it temporarily so no one else is hurt. Then you would build a better bridge, or more accurately, many bridges, as states develop their own plans for providing access to truly affordable health care to replace the old bridge. Finally, when the new bridges are finished you would close the old bridge.”

February 1, 2017: Alexander holds hearing on actions Congress and the Administration can take to rescue the 18 million Americans trapped in an “Obamacare emergency.” At the hearing, Alexander said, “In my home state of Tennessee, in September of 2016, we woke up one morning and BlueCross BlueShield announced that it was pulling out of Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville. That’s 131,000 people who had BlueCross insurance in the individual market. And they wouldn’t be able to buy it in 2017. So they don’t have that option this year. That’s an alarm bell in every one of those homes... Now, it doesn’t make as much a difference to me as to whose fault that is. I can make a pretty good speech about that and you can make a pretty good speech saying why it’s not your fault or it is our fault. I think the question the American people want to know, particularly if they’re among the 11 million people in the exchanges or the 18 million in the whole individual market, is well: What are you going to do about that?”

February 15, 2017: Alexander says HHS proposed rule is a good first step to rescue Americans from collapsing health care market.Alexander said, “Today’s administrative action by Secretary Price is a good first step towards rescuing the health care market that Tennessee's insurance commissioner says is ‘very near collapse.’ Without this course of action, many of the 18 million Americans in the individual insurance market may have zero choices for insurance next year, so having an Obamacare subsidy could soon be like having a bus ticket in a town where no buses run. I continue to work with my colleagues in Congress and the administration on next steps.”